I am here in this country legally. Since I was young, I wanted to pursue My American Dream and wished to strike it big in this country. Even back home I was really impressed with the values and ideas this country stood for and still have difficulty comprehending that the founding fathers thought up all of that more than 200 years ago. I have been fortunate to get a Scholarship in a reputed University on the East Coast and a good job in a big Corporation.

I actively read the newspapers, news-websites to understand the politics, culture of this country and wish to participate, become part of the social fabric. Initially I was led to believe that the Democrats were pro-immigrant and the Republicans were anti-foreigners. I have regular arguments about this with my staunch Republican friend. Over a period of time, I began to understand the great game. This link for example really disgusts me. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/020726/45/1x5tt.html

There are thousands of us that have taken the legal route to become part of this country and realize our dreams, potential. We want to contribute, gain, assimilate, have kids, build a home, go fishing on weekends, watch the NFL and lead an honest life built on hard work. I had to work hard to go theough the legal route. Documentation, Interviews etc., etc., I still have to wait for months before I get a reply from the INS. But more and more, we seem to be punished for being honest and straightforward, for not being illegals. I dont like it. And shame on that Gephardt. Our only sin is, we dont form a solid vote block.

"Under his proposal, "undocumented" immigrants who have been here for at least five years and have been gainfully employed for at least two of them can become legal residents, provided they pass an FBI ( news - web sites) background check and can show that their taxes are fully paid."

If they have been using someone else's SS number they can't prove theyve paid their taxes, right?

Thank you for doing it the legal way and may good fortune follow your paths for doing so!

I've noted for several years that the INS seems to be purposely under-funded or mismanaged to make it so they just don't process the legal people in a timely manner. The number of people who get promised that they can become a citizen legally each year is a lot more than the numbers who actually do become citizens each year. They've got a huge backlog. It is incredible and ridiculous. Republicans who want to limit immigration are painted as being anti-foreigner, but all they want to do is limit immigration, not do away with it. I want to keep between 10% and 15% of all people in the US being foreign born. I don't want it higher than 15%. For this they say I'm anti-foreigner. I'm also offended at those who say we're a nation of immigrants. Our nation has always had 7-15% immigrants among us, the rest are native born. Native born people are not immigrants. Those who say that only american indians are native are just racists.

As we are often reminded when discussions on immigration come up, "we are a nation of immigrants." My Great-Great-Grandparents (on my Mom's side) came over from Holland in the 1840's... My Dad's side of the family has been here (in Georgia by way of Great Britian) since the 1780's ... things were less bureaucratic back then, but they risked the sea journey and the uncertainties, and I am glad they did.

I'm sorry that folks like you have had to jump through the legal hoops (so to speak) only to see lawbreakers rewarded for doing what you were too decent to do. But it is exactly because you chose to do things legally that you are a welcome addition. We all, regardless of how long we have been here, have a vested interest in seeing that everyone that chooses to come here does so with respect for the law.

Anyone who believes that illegal aliens, who's introduction to this country was in breaking the law, will make good citizens, is wrong. Gephart's pandering is pathetic, and insulting to all immigrants who have shown respect for the law.

One very unfair thing about amnesty is that legal immigrants are required to find a "sponsor" who is supposed to guarantee financial support of the immigrant should it be needed. An illegal given amnesty can just head right down to a welfare office and force taxpayers to support them. I'm not completely against all illegals becoming citizens but I think every immigrant should have a sponsor willing to support them for the next 20 years, the sponsors should be held to their promise. If an illegal has proven themself to be a responsible and honest employee and has lived here enough years, it shouldn't be that difficult for them to find a sponsor like the legals are required to.

Not all legal immigration is good ---not when some come over, have an illegitimate baby they plan to use to collect welfare and gain citizenship through that route. An illegal not committing fraud and working hard for cash, learning English and our customs might be a better citizen than many who find loopholes in our laws and get right on welfare. Many living in the projects here technically became legal (usually by having babies at the county hospital) but aren't here to work.

"Under his proposal, "undocumented" immigrants who have been here for at least five years and have been gainfully employed for at least two of them can become legal residents, provided they pass an FBI ( news - web sites) background check and can show that their taxes are fully paid." (wire service article)

Particularly when many have used fake IDs in multiple aliases to avoid criminal charges!

Multiple aliases is the norm among illegals involved in crime beyond just being here illegally. Even those INS just gets fired by finding in a paperwork-compliance check that their Social Security numbers don't match their names invariably get a new fake ID in a new name in order to get a new job.

Only question: does this amnesty if you've worked here and paid taxes five years apply to Arabs overstaying student visas?

And amnestying these illegals into greencarders doesn't change the immense social costs to local communities they've invaded, either.

Particularly when many have used fake IDs in multiple aliases to avoid criminal charges!

I know of one who had 4 fake IDs and was using them to get welfare x 4 in 3 different states ---but she got caught while shoplifting, the police questioned why she had 4 ID's on her, she posted her own bail but jumped back to Mexico. Actually she had been here legally thanks to the 80s amnesty but now is a felon and is having a hard time figuring how to get back.

I've been reading stories lately that up to 10% or more of North Carolina's population is now illegal aliens? From the 1600s up to the 1990s the state had a small population. Now all of a sudden it's exploding with illegals.

Gephardt and the illegal alien apologists should be forced to live in the environments they're creating.

I applaud you for persevering and sticking to your principles of honesty and integrity. You and all those who seek to be citizens the legal way deserve far better than this slap in the face.

"It's not really amnesty, Gephardt claims, because it "rewards hard work with fair play." And, he adds, "it will give us more sense of . . . who is willing to play by the rules and who isn't."

Yes it is really amnesty, Little Dickey. Illegal 'immigrants' are criminals and if you drop the charges against them and give them citizenship that is amnesty. It surely does give us a sense of who plays by the rules and who doesn't. Gephardt doesn't! This scheme rewards the criminal for willfully circumventing the law.

Initially I was led to believe that the Democrats were pro-immigrant and the Republicans were anti-foreigners.

Your post shows that you are one who will probably fit in very nicely, in time, with your well-settled neighbors in your adopted homeland. But permit me, as one of those Republicans, whom you were initially lead to believe were anti-foreigners, to clarify some of the issues in the debate over immigration.

Let me make it very clear that as a Conservative, I am--

1. In favor of severe limitations on new immigration. This is because of the vastly greater population which we have today, over what we had a century ago, when we did not have the congestion around the great metropolitan areas, and it would have been much easier for you to go fishing on the weekend, even if you lived in a major city. (I am just taking a light approach to the congestions factor; but it is quite real, and should be contrasted with the writings of George Washington, inviting the right sort of immigrants upon the promise that we were not congested like the old world.)

2. In favor of the National Origins system of quotas for the limited immigration allowed--repealed by Congress under pressure from Lyndon Johnson in 1965--for the reason that it was designed to preserve the traditional cultural mix, which gave America its traditional character, and avoided the possibility of a radical change in our National cultures. (For more on Immigration issues, see Immigration & The American Future.)

3. In no way antagonistic to the people of any nation. Indeed, even as I favor an immigration policy intended to preserve the unique characteristics of America, I would--in a spirit of good will--urge policies for all other nations, designed to preserve the characteristics, which made each of them unique. I have no sympathy whatsoever with the intolerant movements, which would seek to impose a common culture upon all mankind--or diminish the respect that any people have for their own ancestry, and kith and kin. And I have opposed those in our own State Department, who have sought to foist our particular ideas about how we live upon others, for all of my adult life.

Your post is a reasonable statement by one with sincerity and common sense, who obviously desires to be a good citizen. In the spirit in which you wrote, I will express my personal welcome. May America prove all that you hoped for. And may you help us preserve it.

"Under his proposal, "undocumented" immigrants who have been here for at least five years and have been gainfully employed for at least two of them can become legal residents, provided they pass an FBI ( news - web sites) background check and can show that their taxes are fully paid

"If they have been using someone else's SS number they can't prove they?ve paid their taxes, right?

Good point. It's probably only about 1% of all illegals who will actually meet the requirements, but the rest of the applications will just get rubber-stamped."

Mahmud Abouhalima was one of the men responsible for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Patrick Buchanan writes,

"Under the amnesty grant of 1986, an illegal alien had only to prove that he was a migrant farmer. Though Abouhalima had probably never owned a houseplant, he found a lawyer to affirm that he had worked seven months on a South Carolina farm. His wife would later testify that they had only ever left New York to visit a friend in Michigan, but the INS bought his horticultural yarn and rubber-stamped permanent residency."

This amnesty is bad news, and since it's the Democrats who are pushing for it this time, don't expect Byrd to block it in the Senate.

Tonight The Shrew will host William S. Lind of the Free Congress Foundation on Radio Free Republic! Tune in to hear one of the foremost military writers discuss the article he has co-written with Paul Weyrich!

Welcome, and thank you for coming to this country legally. Please keep on speaking out, as many of our politicians seem to assume that all recent immigrants are in favor of granting amnesty to illegals. I don't understand this. If I were an immigrant and had come in to this country legally, as you did-- waiting my turn, filling out the forms, paying the fees, jumping through the hoops, and whatever else you had to go through-- I would feel the same way you do! After going through all that, I would be especially angry about others sneaking across the border and then getting amnesty.

Bless you, and I hope that living in America is all that you dreamed it would be!

"Not all legal immigration is good ---not when some come over, have an illegitimate baby they plan to use to collect welfare and gain citizenship through that route. An illegal not committing fraud and working hard for cash, learning English and our customs might be a better citizen than many who find loopholes in our laws and get right on welfare. Many living in the projects here technically became legal (usually by having babies at the county hospital) but aren't here to work."

I agree that the character of the individual will ultimately decide the quality of citizen that a person becomes, and that legal immigrants that come here to exploit any loopholes in welfare and social services are not good choices. I don't know exact statistics, but I suspect that they are a small minority among immigrants that choose the legal route, however.

Also, I agree that there should never be more than 5 or 10% total foreign born immigrants in this country at any one time ... we are fragmenting and balkanizing our country every day, so numbers have to be controlled to allow for assimilation and accomodation.

Under no circumstances should illegals be rewarded with amnesty. In fact, I am all for ammending the constitution such that persons born in this country to illegal aliens do not automatically become citizens. And if you are caught as an illegal alien, you can never come back. Period.

and that legal immigrants that come here to exploit any loopholes in welfare and social services are not good choices.

One way to make sure we're not getting the freeloaders would be to deny any sort of welfare program --WIC, food stamps, SSI, Medicaid --to immigrants for 20 years after their arrival. If they haven't got the work habits or skills to make it here then back they go.

Where I live there are so many who manage to find the loopholes though and end up on government assistance and in the projects that I can see where it could be far more important to end the practice of anchor babies and certain family reunifications than it would be for the INS to hunt down the guy out there working in the fields from 3am to 7pm at least earning any cash he gets. SSI is one big program that is very easily abused.

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